Legalweek.comreports that a divided U.K. Supreme court ruled this morning that legal privilege does not extent to advice provided by accountants.

The majority decided that such privilege can only extend to lawyers, including foreign lawyers and in-house lawyers.

The case arose from a tax dispute between British tax authorities and the insurer Prudential.

Prudential argued that advice it received from accountants on the subject of tax law was covered by privilege. But the court held that such a departure from existing law was a matter for Parliament, and that a common law extension would create uncertainty about the rule’s extent. The two dissenting judges on the seven-member panel were not prepared to accept the anomaly in the proposition that tax advice from a lawyer would be privileged, while exactly the same tax advice from an accountant would not be.